ALCOAST 227/20 - JUN 2020 THE COMMAND, CONTROL, COMMUNICATIONS, COMPUTERS, CYBER, AND INTELLIGENCE (C5I) SERVICE CENTER

R 101036 JUN 20
FM COMDT COGARD WASHINGTON DC//CG-6//
TO ALCOAST
UNCLAS //N05230//
ALCOAST 227/20
COMDTNOTE 5230
SUBJ:  THE COMMAND, CONTROL, COMMUNICATIONS, COMPUTERS, CYBER, AND INTELLIGENCE
(C5I) SERVICE CENTER
A. OFCO 037-19- ESTABLISH C5ISC AND DISESTABLISH C4ITSC, C3CEN, TISCOM AND
OSC DTG 131821Z DEC 19
1. IAW REF (A), the Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Information
Technology Service Center (C4ITSC) was disestablished and the Command, Control,
Communications, Computers, Cyber, and Intelligence Service Center (C5ISC) was
established at a commissioning ceremony held on 10 June 2020.
2. The previous C4ITSC Commander, CAPT Russell E. Dash, assumed Command of the C5ISC.
3. The creation of the C5ISC is a massive organizational overhaul and the single
largest Coast Guard unit reorganization in 10 years, encompassing over 800 military
and civilian personnel. The resulting unit will build on the proud history and
accomplishments of its predecessors, carrying forward the best aspects of each
to synthesize them into a new and significantly improved organization. The C5ISC
was established to deliver technology solutions for mission success and will be
measured by its ability to deliver mission support at the speed of need. In addition,
the functional structure of this new unit will underpin and enable the USCG Technology
Revolution’s five lines of effort: Cutter Connectivity; Modernizing C5I Infrastructure;
Cyber Readiness; Software, Mobility and Cloud; and Data for Decisions.
4. Unit Overview. The C5ISC reports to COMDT (CG-68), the Office of C5I Program
Management. Similar to ALC and SFLC, the C5ISC incorporates the four cornerstones
of the DCMS Mission Support Business Model (MSBM), with six Product Lines and five
supporting Shared Services Divisions. The C5ISC Product Lines along with some of
the capabilities they provide are:
   a. Command, Control, and Navigation Product Line (C2PL) – delivering C2 and
navigation systems such as SeaWatch, SINS2, and CG One View.
   b. Communications Product Line (COMPL) – delivering communications systems
such as Rescue 21, MUOS, eMICP/MCV, VHF and HF radios.
   c. Intelligence Systems Product Line (ISPL) – delivering intelligence mission
systems, such as MAGNet and the Tactical Cryptology Afloat systems.
   d. Mission Support Systems Product Line (MSSPL) – delivering mission support
systems such as Direct Access, the Core Accounting Suite, AUXDATA, and the
Learning Management System.
   e. Operations Information Systems Product Line (OISPL) – delivering systems
such as MISLE, SAROPS, WatchKeeper, Ships’ Advanced Notification System, that
support the Coast Guard’s operational missions.
   f. Unified Capabilities Product Line (UCPL) – delivering systems such as
email, chat, Microsoft Office 365 and Teams collaboration, and CGPortal.
5. History of C4ITSC. The C4ITSC was established on 09 February 2009 as part
of the Commandant’s Coast Guard Modernization Initiative, shifting to a
functions-based command structure that standardized processes and procedures
across all locations, missions, and asset types.
   a. Initially led by a Senior Executive Service (SES) Director, then later
converted to an O-6 Commander, the primary mission of the C4ITSC was to unify
the Coast Guard’s C4IT support structure and business practices into a single
mission support model for the entire Coast Guard. The C4ITSC organization placed
the technical authority for C4IT systems and assets in a single chain of command,
unifying the previously independent Centers of Excellence (C3CEN, TISCOM, and OSC).
For 11 years the C4ITSC delivered operational and mission support capabilities
through this organizational model, however, the Coast Guard concluded that a
new organization was needed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the
delivery and sustainment of C5I capabilities.
   b. The Coast Guard conducted extensive analysis and planning for the
C5ISC which was initially envisioned as part of Project Torchlight in 2014,
and further influenced by the Cyber Crisis Action Team in 2015 and then
the C3 Task Force in 2016. Ultimately the Cyber, CIO, and C4IT
Transformation Program Integration Office (C3T PIO) was chartered in 2017
and tasked to develop the C4ITSC reorganization plan, which was approved
by the Vice Commandant in June 2019.
6. History of TISCOM, C3CEN, and OSC. The C4ITSC’s three subordinate COE
Commands were disestablished and realigned under the C5ISC.
   a. The Telecommunication and Information Systems Command (TISCOM) was
established in 1993 as the first Coast Guard IT “Center of Excellence.”
      (1) TISCOM’s mission was to carry out incident, problem, and service
management activities for forty-eight world-wide IT infrastructure services  
in support of the Coast Guard’s eleven missions. TISCOM was initially
tasked with designing, building, and delivering modern digital
communication networks, integrating shore, afloat, and aviation information
systems, and providing reliable, secure data transport services for the Coast
Guard’s daily operations.
      (2) Notable TISCOM achievements include advancing terrestrial radio
capabilities and safety of life at sea through the implementation of
MF/HF Digital Selective Calling, automated maritime weather Voice
Broadcasts (VOBRA), the COMMSTA Control System, and the High Frequency Data
Link (HFDL) enabling worldwide data communication with the cutter fleet. 
Additionally, Coast Guard IT services were exponentially enhanced as TISCOM
led the transition from Standard Workstation II (SWII) to SWIII, the
deployment of infrastructure to support the CGDN+ data network, the
establishment of the current email system via Microsoft Active Directory
Domain and Exchange Email Consolidation, the formation of DHS IT infrastructure
and its integration, and ultimately the rollout of the current data network,
CGOne. TISCOM further advanced critical cutter connectivity over the years
through four generations of Commercial Satellite Communications (COMSATCOM)
systems to include Inmarsat A and B, Fleet Broadband, Small and Large Cutter
Ku-Band, and cellular connectivity for the inland tenders and ice breaking
tugs. In response to the need for contingency communications capabilities,
TISCOM developed and fielded the Enhanced Mobile Incident Command Post (eMICP)
and Mobile Communications Vehicles (MCV) providing the USCG unprecedented,
robust, mobile communication suites for deployable emergency response. 
TISCOM finished strong with the rapid rollout of remote user capabilities
to expand the Coast Guard’s ability to telework during the COVID-19 event,
and by providing some of the initial foundational capabilities for the
Commandant’s Technical Revolution.
      (3) Comprising more than IT and communications, TISCOM was also
the command for the Coast Guard’s Ceremonial Honor Guard. In 1965,
the Honor Guard moved from Curtis Bay, MD to the TISCOM campus to enable
high-level ceremonial support to Washington DC, Arlington National
Cemetery, and the White House. The Ceremonial Honor Guard represents
the USCG, the Military District of Washington, and the United States Armed
Forces through ceremonial operations held before the President, the
Secretary of Defense, and visiting world leaders and dignitaries. 
Additionally, the Honor Guard conducts last burial ceremonies for our
shipmates at Arlington National Cemetery and across the country. The
Honor Guard performs more than 1,600 ceremonial missions each year. The
Ceremonial Honor Guard is currently in the process of becoming an
independent Headquarters command that will remain at the Alexandria
campus as a tenant command.
      (4) The current site in Alexandria, VA was initially established
in 1939 as USCG Washington Radio Station (NMH), the "Voice of the
Commandant," when 200 acres were given to the Coast Guard from George
Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate at Hayfield. During World War II, NMH
provided communications support for ships and aircraft and established
the Electronic Engineering Laboratory to test submarine cables and grind
crystals required for radio devices deployed on global US forces. In
the postwar years, its responsibilities increased to include IT systems
research, testing, and development. In 1976, the base was renamed CG
Station Alexandria, and finally on 7 April 1993 it became TISCOM. As
a Coast Guard facility, TISCOM also provided base support services for
multiple tenant commands to include: C4IT Service Center, Coast Guard
Cyber Command, Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS) Washington Field
Office, Coast Guard Navigation Center, and C3CEN Detachment Alexandria. 
      (5) During its 80-year history in Alexandria, TISCOM has developed
a proud legacy of community engagement through participation in
Partnership in Education (PIE), hosting events for the Boy Scouts,
Girl Scouts, Navy Sea Cadets, USO, and Joint Military Attache School,
and providing training facilities and fields for several local sports
organizations. TISCOM also hosts the annual Commandant’s Coast Guard
Day Picnic for the National Capital Region, and the traditional
LobsterFest fundraiser hosted by the Coast Guard’s CPOA. As part of
the new C5ISC, TISCOM’s exceptionally talented workforce will continue
to provide the IT enterprise and network solutions critical to USCG
mission success, and the Alexandria campus will continue in its role
supporting the community.
   b. The Command, Control, and Communications Engineering Center
(C3CEN) was established in 2010 to provide and manage Coast Guard
Command, Control, Communications, Surveillance, and Navigation
capabilities.
      (1) C3CEN’s history began in 1986 as the Command, Display,
and Control (COMDAC) Support Facility responsible for the installation,
lifecycle support and training of the COMDAC System aboard all 270’
Medium Endurance Cutters. 35 military and civilian staff were originally
assigned to the COMDAC Support Facility to support the first integrated
Navigation and Tactical System onboard USCG vessels. The system’s
success was highlighted during the 1991-1992 Haitian mass migration
where the Officer-In-Tactical Command (OTC) was delegated to a
COMDAC-equipped WMEC-270. 
      (2) In 1996, the COMDAC Support Facility was re-commissioned
as the Command and Control Engineering Center (C2CEN), becoming one
of the Coast Guard’s Centers of Excellence and absorbing the mission
of developing, maintaining, and training afloat and ashore C2 and
navigation systems from the Electronic Engineering Center (EECEN) in
Wildwood, NJ. C2CEN expanded its missions becoming the Coast Guard’s
largest engineering command with 125 military and 80 civilians
supported by a vast array of contracted personnel. Some of the
expanded missions included life cycle support of the Vessel Traffic
Service (VTS), including upgrading VTS sites in New York, Seattle,
San Francisco and Houston. The crew continued to work on electronic
charting, closed circuit television for flight decks, navigation
and surface search radars, short range aids to navigation, and Y2K
calendar rollover risk mitigation for USCG C2 systems. Adding to
the core training mission, C2CEN began training buoy tender crews
on the operation and maintenance of the integrated shipboard control
and maintenance systems installed on their cutters.
      (3) In 2010, C2CEN was reorganized and became C3CEN, incorporating
the Mission Support Business Model with Product Lines and Core
Technologies aligned to C4IT assets and capabilities. Additionally,
C3CEN assumed all electronic repair and System Development and Support
Agent responsibilities for RF communications, Communication Area Master
Stations and Communication Stations, and Navy Type electronics. 
Living up to C3CEN’s Motto of “Sustaining the Present and Developing
the Future”, eight detachments were established across the country
employing almost 1,000 military, civilian, and contractor personnel. 
C3CEN’s capability expansion continued over the years to include
VHF/UHF Search and Rescue Communications (Rescue 21), NSC/FRC/OPC
C3ISR, SCCS Next Generation C2, Nationwide AIS Increment 2,
Intelligence, Biometrics, and the Minotaur Aviation Systems.
      (4) By 2020, C3CEN supported 250 cutters, the Communications
Command (COMMCOM) which includes 14 Remote Communication
Facilities and five Mobile Communications Centers, Rescue 21,
50 Command Centers, 55 Air Assets, Maritime Intelligence Fusion
Centers, the Nationwide Differential Global Positioning System,
1600 small boats, 134 Nationwide Automatic Identification System
Remote Fixed Facilities covering 58 critical ports and 11 critical
waterways, and a national training center that provided cutter and
boat operator courses to nearly 1,000 students annually. Today,
C3CEN’s staff consists of more than 350 personnel who provide
cradle-to-grave lifecycle management of 47 systems and 25 products
in direct support of every Coast Guard mission.
      (5) Today’s prominent C3CEN efforts include Seawatch and Rescue
21. Following the legacy of its origins, Seawatch provides an integrated
command and control system that combines communications and
surveillance systems, together with navigation and tactical sensors to
improve situational awareness while operating at sea. Rescue 21 is a
nationwide radio distress communications system that allows the Coast
Guard to geo-locate the source of a distress broadcast. Its
ever-expanding footprint currently covers 296,000 square nautical
miles of radio coverage. To date, Rescue 21 has played a vital role
in prosecuting more than 75,000 search and rescue cases, and has been
credited with saving thousands of lives in the process.
      (6) In addition to its ongoing commitment to excellence
supporting CG missions, C3CEN has also been a staunch advocate for
and participant in a wide range of community service efforts. Most
notably, C3CEN has maintained an extensive Partnership in Education
program where volunteers devote their time and talent promoting the
fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to local
youth. On average, C3CEN personnel provided over 700 volunteer hours
annually in support of seven different local schools.  
   c. The Operations Systems Center (OSC) was established in October
1991 with the relocation of the Operations Computer Center (OCC) from
Governors Island, NY to Martinsburg, WV.
      (1) United States Senator Robert Byrd obtained $4.7M in federal
funds to help finance the relocation and initial operation of OSC as
part of an initiative to enhance the federal presence in West Virginia. 
Effective 25 October 1991, OSC assumed all operating functions from OCC
and was officially commissioned on 26 November 1991. OSC was charged
with designing, developing, and delivering enterprise C4IT capabilities
using innovative services and solutions to support USCG missions. OSC
initially supported just five systems relocated from Governors
Island, NY: Automated Mutual-Assistance Vessel Rescue System (AMVER),
Marine Safety Information System (MSIS), Summary of Enforcement Events
Report (SEER), Law Enforcement Information System (LEIS), and the Joint
Maritime Information Exchange (JMIE). The first new system delivered
directly to OSC was the Law Enforcement Information System II (LEIS II)
in 1993 as a replacement for both SEER and LEIS.
      (2) Following the closure of the EECEN in Wildwood, NJ, the
Software Development Branch of EECEN was moved to OSC on 1 August 1997. 
Work on the Marine Safety Network (MSN), the project to replace MSIS,
transferred from EECEN to OSC. In July 2000, OSC was officially
designated the Coast Guard’s Software Systems Development Center and a
USCG Center of Excellence to firmly establish governance of IT systems
development. In December 2001, an expanded and matured MSN capability
known as the Maritime Information for Safety and Law Enforcement (MISLE)
system was operationally deployed at OSC.
      (3) Over the years, the five original systems OSC hosted in 1991
grew into 12 by 1995, then 33 by 1998, and now over 60 today. Some of
the mission essential applications OSC created include the Ship Arrival
and Notification Systems (SANS), National Automated Identification
System (NAIS) Core, Long Range Identification and Tracking System
(LRIT), CGFIXIT, the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), Maritime Awareness
Global Network (MAGNet) 2.0, as well as the complete rewrite of MISLE
into MISLE 5.0, to name a few.
      (4) The last major organizational change to OSC was initiated in
2010 when the U.S. CIO published a plan to Reform Federal Information
Technology Management. COMDT (CG-6) responded by directing a multi-faceted
IT consolidation effort that ultimately resulted in OSC absorbing IT and
data center functions previously supported by the Finance Center, Pay
and Personnel Center, and the Aviation Logistics Center.
      (5) As a data center, OSC achieved numerous significant technology
milestones over the course of the past 19 years. Between 2005 and 2010,
significant investments and improvements were made to transform the
legacy data floor into a true enterprise data center incorporating
industry-class processes and technologies. In 2013, the OSC data
center was officially designated as one of three DHS data centers,
specifically tasked to support the operational requirements for Coast
Guard’s 24x7x365 high availability Mission Essential Systems. This
necessitated large-scale projects to re-architect the Local Area
Network and re-engineer the electric power to upgrade and automate
the infrastructure. Additional environmental projects were implemented
to improve the availability and reliability of the data center while
reducing power consumption to comply with federal standards for data
center efficiency. Those projects combined to produce a Coast Guard owned,
modern hybrid cloud infrastructure that is now poised to support the
Technology Revolution.
7. Effective immediately all correspondence formerly sent to the C4ITSC, C3CEN,
OSC, and TISCOM shall be addressed to the C5ISC:
   a. Administrative messages: CMD-SMB-CG-C5ISC
   b. Operational messages: COGARD C5ISC Alexandria VA
8. If you have any questions or would like more information on the C5I Service Center,
please visit the CGPortal site at: http://cglink.uscg.mil/C5ISC (USCG-internal only).
9. RADM Dave Dermanelian, Assistant Commandant for Command, Control, Communications,
Computers and Information Technology (C-6), sends.
10. Internet release is authorized.